Money & Banking

I know that it’s good to have alternatives to government-created currencies. The dollar’s value is only backed by politicians’ promises. I sure won’t trust those.

Inflation—the government’s expansion of the money supply—creates the appearance of business prosperity along with the fact of general impoverishment, which results in blaming poverty on business and profits.

Rothbard does not refute White’s thesis that Scottish banking was less regulated and hence more stable and well-functioning than England’s banking system in the same 145-year period.

Any official effort to link the dollar to gold today would be just another act of monetary central planning.

Blame the Bankers, Not Freedom in Banking

That there was widespread support for the Scottish bank suspension did not, however, mean that the suspension left the Scottish public unscathed.

Does the Scottish suspension suggest that fractional reserve banking is, inconsistent with genuine freedom in banking, including the consistent honoring of bank customers’ property rights?

If we can’t kill it entirely, we should be thinking about ways to make the Fed less political, not more.

The financial crisis of 2008-9 — accompanied by the Great Recession was caused by government intervention, mainly in mortgage finance and the housing sector.

I don’t trust politicians, generally, but I especially don’t trust them with money. Since the U.S. went off the gold standard, the dollar has lost 80 percent of its value.

Central banking is a form of central planning. The Federal Reserve has a legal monopoly over the monetary system of the United States.

The creation of money doesn’t create wealth, unless money itself is wealth — as it was when it was gold and silver.

John Allison, former CEO & Chairman of BB&T and current president of Cato, talks on the financial crisis and the philosophy of Ayn Rand at the Adam Smith Institute’s first Ayn Rand Lecture at Drapers’ Hall.

Government planners fail to “manage” market economies as the indicators they use are themselves false signals hiding from view the reality of the complex market system.

In the middle of July 2018, President Donald Trump said in an interview that he was “not happy” with the Federal Reserve nudging up interest rates and threatening economic growth in the United States. At the recent Jackson Hole, Wyoming, meeting of global central bank...

John A. Allison is an Executive in Residence at the Wake Forest School of Business. He has served as president and CEO of the Cato Institute, and chairman and CEO of BB&T Corporation. This article is based on his remarks at Cato’s 34th Annual Monetary Conference,...

The phantom of “inflation targeting.”

Forget about monetary policy for a moment or two, and imagine, instead, that you’re back in 6th grade. You and your classmates are about to go on a camping trip, involving some strenuous hiking, and lasting several days.

Forget about monetary policy for a moment or two, and imagine, instead, that you’re back in 6th grade. You and your classmates are about to go on a camping trip, involving some strenuous hiking, and lasting several days.

Greater monetary freedom would not only give every citizen a legal right to protect and secure his income, wealth and market transactions from abusive mismanagement of the government’s monopoly monetary printing press. It could also serve as a check on the degree of such government abuse.

The real lessons to be learned from Canada’s 19th-century currency system.

The real lessons to be learned from Canada’s 19th-century currency system.

The real lessons to be learned from Canada’s 19th-century currency system.

The Federal Reserve’s monetary and regulatory policies were major contributors to the 2007-2009 Great Recession.

John Allison’s testimony before the Subcommittee on Monetary Policy and Trade, Committee on Financial Services, United States House of Representatives on March 16, 2017. Chairman Barr, ranking Member Moore, and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me...

Instead of endeavoring to influence a market-determined federal funds rate by reducing or increasing the supply of bank reserves, the Fed now adjusts a pair of rates determined solely by its own administrative decrees, while conducting open-market operations without any particular reference to these rate adjustments.

A stable inflation rate is no guarantee of overall economic stability.